Regardless of your views on the recent election, maintaining the political status quo makes predicting next year’s changes in meat and poultry regulation easier. Here’s how I see 2013 unfolding:
Poultry slaughter modernization: This has been and will likely remain the No. 1 priority for the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS). As proposed, the modernized inspection system will assign responsibility to the establishments to sort birds, thereby reducing the number of FSIS inspectors at poultry slaughter plants, while leaving one inspector on the line to meet the statutory requirement of bird-by-bird inspection. This would reduce the costs of inspection.